To investigate the progress and application of near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) used to detect amino acids in the growth of crops and food processing process. With online searching databases including ISI (Web of Knowledge), CNKI (China Knowledge Network), summarize the detection of chemical value using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and chemometric methods involved in the application of NIR used to analyze amino acids in food, meanwhile summarize the data, materials and main topics in relevant original literature. Overview the methods of chemical value detection using HPLC and chemometric analysis, their applications in detecting the quality of crops, determining the content of water, amino acids and polyphenol in green tea, detecting the quality of feed and determining the content of amino acids in cheese, ham and meat products. We forecasted the application of NIR in determining the content of amino acids in food and analyzed its merits and drawbacks. The development of NIR’s application in amino acids detection should be based on the HPLC detection, and the problem of model transfer mainly restricts its large-scale promotion currently. Online analysis can monitor the entire reaction and change process from raw materials to products and thus meets the needs of real-time monitoring food quality from production to sales, and it will be an important direction for future.